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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Finally a chicken sausage replacement...

Thanks for all of the suggestions regarding the blog's name - I think we are just going to keep the url the same, but go with the idea that was thrown around in this post of adding "Country" to the banner and crossing out "Desert".

When we were in Phoenix, we used to be able to get a chicken breakfast sausage at Trader Joe's that Jeff really liked having for weekday breakfasts. Since moving here, we noticed that the closest TJs (30-40 minutes away...) does not carry it and the local stores didn't have anything he liked. I figured we should be able to make something ourselves and we finally found something he really enjoyed.

The original recipe for Chicken Breakfast Sausage used ground turkey, but we switched that out with chicken I ground in the food processor. By doing this myself, I can control the texture, so they don't turn out pasty. I used shredded Fuji apples which brought a bit of sweetness and helped to keep to these tender patties moist. To add a savory compliment to the sweetness, garlic, fresh thyme and fresh sage are mixed in. When you form these into patties, you will need to wet your fingers as they tend to get a little sticky. I've made these twice now and cook them all at once, then freeze into individual portions that we can quickly heat up in the morning for a fast breakfast. Just a reminder... as always, full views tend to show the best image - you can always click on them to see a larger/clearer view!

We are pretty much back to normal in the recipe department - we made 13 new recipes this week! I'm still trying, however, to get used to a new routine for our weekly grocery trips on Sundays. We used to get the weekly ads in the mail, but out here, we don't seem to get any for the local stores. We spent a good part of the morning going through them on-line to figure out where we needed to go. Hopefully we can get into a groove soon so it doesn't seem to take so long to get what we need! I have quite a busy week in the kitchen planned with a lot more new recipes... check back to see what we cook up and bake each day!

I don't think I'd cook the snake version, but given my partner's cholesterol restrictions, I'm always on the lookout for good chicken recipes. I haven't been over to this blog in a while sorry, but I can see several very appealing creations (the orzo, the corn) in recent posts already!

My Dad used to make sausage. Of course, it was 40 years ago, so it was always pork. I remember helping out with breakfast at the restaurant and he would make us both a sausage sandwich at 6 am. I've never had sausage that tasted that good again. But, your chicken sausage sounds very tasty -- and I like that you did it all yourself. Probably much better than anything you would find.

I have been a sausage maker for over twenty years. Usually around the ranch we harvest one or two rattlesnakes. It wasn't unitl recently I thought about makeing snake sausage. I have a snake in the freezer. It takes alot of snake to get a pound of meat. May be lots of garlic and jalepnos would make a great sausage. I am game. When I get a couple of more snakes this summer, I will give it try. In the mean time we are makeing chicken sausage this week to go with Easter dinner. No rabbit for sausage this year, like we had last year.